bubblegum

Bubblegum Timeline

Daryl L. L. Houston21 Comments

My copy of Bubblegum arrived today, and I’ve had a chance to flip through it and come up with a timeline for reading it. I figure that about 100 pages a week should be doable, and the book breaks down fairly neatly into sections of about that length. Here’s what I propose:

Date Read Through Page
May 11 81
May 18 176
May 25 282
June 1 377
June 8 476
June 15 583
June 22 660
June 29 767

That means it’s fair game to write or comment about the first 81 pages on May 11, the first 176 on May 18, and so on. I’m not going to worry too much about spoilers, but I suppose it’d be a kindness to readers sticking close to this pace to avoid any huge or far-future spoilers as we write about and discuss the book.

If you’re planning to write posts along with me and have done so here in the past, your account should still let you do so. If you’ve not written here in the past and would like to, send me a note at infinitezombies at gmail or comment here and I’ll be in touch. Anyone of course is welcome — indeed encouraged — to comment. The more ideas we toss around in the comments, the more I think we’ll get out of the book.

The schedule’s not set in stone, so if you’re a would-be writer and this simply won’t work for you, let me know. I’m open to making some adjustments over the next few days. Otherwise, I’m looking forward to kicking things off in earnest the week of May 11.

Bubblegum

Daryl L. L. Houston15 Comments

bubblegumWhen I floated last week the idea of spinning up a new group read, I proposed only books that had been published for some time. We’ve generally discussed books here that’ve been published for a while. I posted to the wallace-l mailing list to see if there was any interest (there had been some overlap between that group and people participating in the initial Infinite Summer read that resulted in this site). There was. And several people suggested Adam Levin’s forthcoming book Bubblegum. Just about a week ago, I had finished Levin’s The Instructions and liked it. Another brick by the same author is appealing to me. So is wading into a book that’s not a reread.

DFW mavens Matt Bucher and Dave Laird run a podcast called The Great Concavity, and they recently had Levin as a guest. They spoke some about Infinite Jest but also spoke about Bubblegum and read a couple of passages from it. Consider giving that a listen to whet your appetite.

The book comes out on Tuesday, and any who are interested in reading it will need some time to get the book. I’ve placed an order with my local indie bookstore, which isn’t properly open during the pandemic but which is taking orders and mailing books out or doing curbside pick-up. If you’re game to join in a group read of the book, I hope you’ll do the same. I’ll post more about the timing once I get a sense for how long it’ll take to get the book into enough hands to make a group read plausible.

If you’re in, consider commenting to let me know (and if you can ballpark the timing on getting the book, that’d be helpful too). If you’d like to contribute posts here, let me know that too (by email at infinitezombies at gmail if you’re shy about speaking up in the comments).